It wasn’t like the New York Knicks were in first place Friday when they decided to trade away their two leading scorers. On the contrary, the Knicks haven’t been to the playoffs since 2004 and new team president Donnie Walsh has his hands full trying to dig out from the wreckage of the Isiah Thomas regime.

Friday’s trades that sent Zach Randolph to the Los Angeles Clippers and Jamal Crawford to the Golden State Warriors for three players with contracts that expire in 2010, creating cap space to go after LeBron James and other prominent free agents then.

Still, when one of the most prominent franchises in sports dumps its two — arguably — best players in hopes of making a splash in the free-agent market not this summer but next summer, it ranks among the most notable salary-dumping trades of recent years, weighing in at No. 5 in Tuesday’s Top Five.

Only Carolina Hurricanes general manager Jim Rutherford knows if Peter Laviolette saved his job with Sunday’s 3-2 comeback, shootout win over the Tampa Bay Lightning, or if his job was even in danger.

This much is for certain: Laviolette’s seat has been pretty hot lately after a three-game losing streak that saw the Hurricanes outscored 13-5. Here’s another certainty, if Hurricanes history is any guide: Just because times are tough now doesn’t mean he can’t rally the team to the playoffs.

Whatever ends up happening, the Canes’ slide and Laviolette’s resulting uncertain position ranks among the five most significant coaching crises in the Hurricanes’ time in North Carolina — Tuesday’s Top Five.

It was novel, even cute, when the Miami Dolphins decided to take the quarterback out of the equation and snap the ball directly to Ronnie Brown. And they’ve had success with their “wildcat” formation this season, spawning imitators in the NFL and in college.

The question is: Why?

In college, where QB play can be considerably less refined, maybe it makes some sense. But NFL teams are using a considerable chunk of their salary cap on the quarterback position, and this gimmick is essentially a waste of resources. (Cynical New York Jets fans — is there any other kind? — might argue that taking Chad Pennington out of the equation is the smartest move the Dolphins could make.)

Digging into the playbook for something out of the past is hardly a new tactic — the “wildcat” is merely a reworking of the old single- and double-wing formations — but there’s a reason coaches aren’t still running Pop Warner’s plays. They don’t work any more — except as a gimmick.

And in the NFL, defenses already are starting to do the math. The surprise factor is gone. Let the Dolphins have their fun as long as it lasts and leave it at that.

Which brings us to this week’s Tuesday Top Five: The top five recent developments that make no sense.

The Tennessee Titans have made it this far. At the halfway point of the season, they’re 8-0 and looking strong. They came within an overtime field goal of losing to the Green Bay Packers on Sunday, but the question remains, are the Titans really the NFL’s best team?

Tuesday’s Top Five is the top five reasons they are.

Erik Cole’s impending return to the RBC Center with the Edmonton Oilers on Saturday should mark one of the few times Carolina Hurricanes fans have had a real chance to salute one of their departed favorites.

Ron Francis, Arturs Irbe and Glen Wesley, just to name a few, were traded elsewhere but never played against the Hurricanes in Raleigh. A few returned to abuse — Keith Primeau tops that list — and a few to acclaim, like Matt Cullen and Aaron Ward when they returned with the New York Rangers less than five months after winning the Stanley Cup with the Canes.

Put it all together, and you get Tuesday’s Top Five: The top five Hurricanes homecomings.

The books that occupy the holiest of spots in the sports canon are pretty obvious at this point: The Boys of Summer, Friday Night Lights, Ball Four and A Season on the Brink, among others.

They’re all there for good reason. Those four, and their peers, are beyond reproach and beyond debate. But while there’s plenty of dross written about sports, whether it be the big star’s ghost-written autobiography or the big novelist slumming it with athletes, there are a few overlooked gems that sometimes slip through the cracks.

This isn’t a list of the top five sports books of all time, just five worth reading, if you haven’t already: